Time Limitation of Referred Bill Pursuant to Rule XII

TIME LIMITATION OF REFERRED BILL PURSUANT TO RULE XII -- (House of Representatives - June 23,
2004)

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Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Chairman, I do not oppose the amendment, but I resent the implication that the President did something wrong. And I would like to read.

"That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for. I thought the President had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, 'Look, guys, after 9-11 you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process. I supported what he did going into Iraq. What I was far more worried about was that he'd sell this stuff or give it away. Same thing I've always been worried about North Korea's nuclear and al Qaeda, as well as North Korea giving away nuclear components."

This is President Bill Clinton. And al Qaeda was there in Iraq. Al Qaeda had significant ties to that. Saddam Hussein paid people to blow themselves up in Israel and kill American citizens. So the implication that al Qaeda was not in Iraq I oppose. But I do not oppose going in and researching exactly what those were.

[From Time Magazine, June 28, 2004]

You know, I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over. I don't believe he went in there for oil. We didn't go in there for imperialist or financial reasons. We went in there because he bought the Wolfowitz-Cheney analysis that the Iraqis would be better off, we could shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, and our leverage to make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis would be increased.

At the moment the U.N. inspectors were kicked out in 1998, this is the proper language: there were substantial quantities of botulinum and aflatoxin, as I recall, some bioagents, I believe there were those, and VX and ricin, chemical agents, unaccounted for. Keep in mind, that's all we ever had to work on. We also thought there were a few missiles, some warheads, and maybe a very limited amount of nuclear laboratory capacity.

After 9/11, let's be fair here, if you had been President, you'd think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you're sitting there as President, you're reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I've got to do that.

That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for. So I thought the President had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, "Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process. You couldn't responsibly ignore [the possibility that] a tyrant had these stocks. I never really thought he'd [use them]. What I was far more worried about was that he'd sell this stuff or give it away.
Same thing I've always been worried about North Korea's nuclear and missile capacity. I don't expect North Korea to bomb South Korea, because they know it would be the end of their country. But if you can't feed yourself, the temptation to sell this stuff is overwhelming. So that's why I thought Bush did the right thing to go back. When you're the President, and your country has just been through what we had, you want everything to be accounted for.

ON WHETHER THE IRAQ WAR WAS WORTH THE COSTS

It's a judgment that no one can make definitively yet. I would not have done it until after Hans Blix finished his job.
Having said that, over 600 of our people have died since the conflict was over. We've got a big stake now in making it work. I want it to have been worth it, even though I didn't agree with the timing of the attack. I think if you have a pluralistic, secure, stable Iraq, the people of Iraq will be better off, and it might help the process of internal reform in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. I think right now, getting rid of Saddam's tyranny, ironically, has made Iraq more vulnerable to terrorism coming in from the outside. But any open society is going to be more vulnerable than any tyranny to that.